In which Dusty demonstrates his lack of understanding of basic statistics.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 8:29 AM EDT

Seriously, I don't know how to begin to reason with someone who says something like this (from CTR's blog):

"Every time he doesn't get a hit, his odds of getting a hit go up every time," Baker said of his shortstop.

...

No, Dusty, I don't think that's true. If I flip a (fair) coin, and it comes up heads six times in a row, what's the probability of it coming up tails the next time?

Yep, still 50%.

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A novel concept

What Dusty is insinuating here is that batting slumps are actually beneficial to the team. Anyone care to speculate as what our record would be without his brilliance at the helm? I’ll be modest… 54-48.

I got 99 problems but a job ain't one.

by chesirecat on Jul 23, 2008 9:34 AM EDT 0 recs

Nah

I’d bet that he’s probably only netted one or two losses on the season. He’s done a couple of things that worked and a few that haven’t. I’d say this team, with the way it’s played, would be no better than .500 with or without Dusty. FWIW, they are actually 3 games over their expected record. If we’re being fair, we should attribute some of that to Dusty.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 9:45 AM EDT up 0 recs

Though...

take out Patterson, switch Dunn and Griffey in the lineup, and we produce some more runs.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 9:49 AM EDT up 0 recs

definitely

especially if they haven’t been hitting much lately. They’d be due.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 10:06 AM EDT up 0 recs

Hypothetical

So say we had someone hitting at Bruce’s season clip (.275/.333/.435) replacing Patterson’s .190/.224/.335 for, say, 50 starts, plus we bat Dunn second or third and Griffey fifth or sixth (what’s that good for, a third of a PA difference? so about 30 more for Dunn and 30 fewer for Griffey?). How many more runs does the offense produce with just those two small changes?

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 10:15 AM EDT up 0 recs

You're the stats guy

I wish I was that good at figuring this kind of stuff out. Normally, I’d just pop those numbers into Pinto’s lineup tool, but Justin has me convinced that that thing’s not very accurate at all. If I get a chance today, I’ll play around with the Markov Chain spreadsheet and see if I can get an estimate. I think what I’ll try to do is take a total for each position (i.e. assume playing time hasn’t changed for each player at SS and CF minus Patterson), and subtract out Patterson’s numbers replacing the at bats with similar production to Bruce. Then we’ll shift the lineup around and see what kind of changes we get. Does that sound good?

Now if only I had time to do it.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 10:33 AM EDT up 0 recs

If I understand EqA correctly, and my math is correct...

Well, Dunn’s EqA is .318, Griffey is at .269, Patterson .197, and Bruce .261. So say we add 30 PAs for Dunn (9.54 runs) and subtract 30 for Griffey (-8.07); we net 1.47 runs.

Now, let’s say Bruce and Patterson would average 4 PAs per game, so we’re subtracting 200 PAs from Patterson (-39.4 runs) and adding 200 for Bruce (52.2); we net 12.8 runs.

The total, then, is 14.3 runs. We now score 449+14 = 463 runs, allow 498 (CF defense might affect that slightly, sure), and our Pythagorean W-L is 48-54, compared to our current Pythagorean of 46-56 and our actual record of 49-53.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 10:34 AM EDT up 0 recs

Of course this is simpler than what you proposed above.

But I also recommend taking a look at BP’s EqA numbers for the Reds. Looking at how the PAs have been allocated given the relative offensive production of players is pretty informative.

Like, say, Dunn has 7 fewer PAs (394) than Griffey (401). And Bruce only now has the same number of PAs (213) as Patterson. And BP leads the team with 429 PAs, despite having the sixth-highest EqA…

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 10:41 AM EDT up 0 recs

Yours is probably enough effort

I doubt I would get extremely different results.

I will say that if you remove Patterson’s numbers as a CF and replace them with similar production to Bruce’s entire season, the batting line for Reds CF goes from .259/.311/.413 to .297/.358/.450. The .297 batting average would be the highest for NL CFs by team. The .358 OBP would be tied for highest for NL CFs by team. And the .808 OPS would be the third highest in the NL. Considering the CF have the most PAs on the team, such a change would likely not be insignificant.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 10:54 AM EDT up 0 recs

EqA

EqA is a general offensive metric but it doesn’t represent an amount of runs. You’d have to use something like BRAA to arrive at a runs gained/loss figure.

by ken on Jul 23, 2008 10:54 AM EDT up 0 recs

Actually

I hadn’t looked at the description before, but it is the total offensive value per out. So, I think what Gray is doing is close, but he should be multiplying by outs, not PAs. So, if you replace Corey Patterson’s 158 outs as a CF with Bruce’s production, you remove 31.1 runs and add 41.2, for a net of 10 runs.

It’s a little more complicated with Griffey and Dunn since the idea is swap them in the lineup and not necessarily replace them. However, if you can take 20 outs from Griffey and give them to Dunn, roughly the equivalent of 30 PAs, you net to about 1 run added. In other words, the switch of Griffey and Dunn may not change a whole lot, but switching Patterson and Bruce would likely get the Reds an extra win.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 11:07 AM EDT up 0 recs

Not quite.

EqR is total offensive production per out, but EqA translates that to a per-PA rate. But as I commented below, I think MLV/MLVr is what I want.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:09 AM EDT up 0 recs

From BP:

Equivalent Average. A measure of total offensive value per out, with corrections for league offensive level, home park, and team pitching.

I think EqR is the run value as the formula is EqR = 5 * OUT * EQA^2.5.

This is why I don’t like BP’s metrics that much. Too confusing.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 11:14 AM EDT up 0 recs

Confusing and non-transparent

They’re fine for quick comparisons but impractical for exercises like this.

As I understand it EqA/EqR measure “offensive value”, not runs. EqA is scaled so that the average every year is .260. But the average player does not produce the same number of runs from year to year because of the different run scoring environments. The average player in ‘68 contributed less runs than the average player today simply because runs were scarcer back then.

by ken on Jul 23, 2008 11:45 AM EDT up 0 recs

gotcha, thanks

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 12:00 PM EDT up 0 recs

Yeah

The reason I object to Equivalent Average is it involves a lot of convuluted formulations to make it look like batting average. And I feel like one of the important gains of the saber movement has been to get people away from the ’.300 always = good’ thinking. EqA goes through unnecessary effort in order to cater to that.

by Red Menace on Jul 23, 2008 1:57 PM EDT up 0 recs

How about MLVr?

My understanding of MLVr is that it’s the marginal run production (rate) for a lineup containing a player over one with a league-average player instead. Multiplying the rate by PAs and subtracting is roughly equivalent to switching PAs from one player to another.

As for the rates: Dunn .234, Griffey .023, Bruce .039, Patterson -.332.

The same calculations as before yield a gain of 6.33 for the Dunn/Griffey switch, and gain of 74.2 for the Bruce/Patterson switch, for a total gain of 80.53. I’ll round down to 80, giving 529 runs scored to 498 allowed. Pythagorean W-L is now 54-48.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:08 AM EDT up 0 recs

However...

these numbers seem huge.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:09 AM EDT up 0 recs

Justin's numbers, which include defense

would net out somewhere around 10 runs gained for Bruce (+2.8) over Patterson (-6.5), and roughly 4 runs gained for giving Dunn 10% more PAs and Griffey 10% less. Those were just rough eyeball numbers though.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 11:18 AM EDT up 0 recs

Ahhhh

I see why they’re so huge.

MLVr is approximately equal to MLV per game.

Okay, let’s divide those numbers by four, yielding 20 extra runs (469). Pythagorean W-L is back to 48-54.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:19 AM EDT up 0 recs

I think what we’re seeing is that these small changes would likely only result in a game or two difference. Given that the Reds are already playing over their Pythag, I think we’d have to assume that these sort of net changes would likely have a negligible effect on their actual record.

It's a lousy night to be an atheist!

by Slyde on Jul 23, 2008 11:24 AM EDT up 0 recs

Hey, if we played just as lucky...

and had increased PAs for Bruce, Dunn, EdE, Votto, and Ross, with decreased PAs for Patterson, Griffey, BP, Valentin and Bako…

well, yeah. We could have won a few more games. We wouldn’t be leading the division by any means.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:29 AM EDT up 0 recs

I would bet that

Dusty’s late inning switch of Patterson for Dunn have cost this team 1-2 wins, not to mention all the other stupid stuff he does.

FIRE DUSTY BAKER

by Blue on Jul 23, 2008 4:33 PM EDT up 0 recs

speaking of Dusty and stats

this has me all kinds of excited. our boy EdE is OPSing .861 and has an EqA of .296 so far this season. most of us were hoping for a “breakout” year from the kid and i think this has all the makings of something like that. he’s been OPSing 1.242 over the last month. and all of this has been done toiling away in the 6th or 7th spot in the order. Dusty, PLEASE, move him up!

please dont shit on my dreams. i dont want shit on my dreams.

by Charlie Scrabbles on Jul 23, 2008 10:22 AM EDT 0 recs

he keeps getting hits

so every time he comes to the plate, he’s less likely to get another one. Its amazing that his streak has lasted two months.

FIRE DUSTY BAKER

by Blue on Jul 23, 2008 4:34 PM EDT up 0 recs

Edwin

Is our 2nd best hitter right now.

by homerun21 on Jul 23, 2008 10:23 AM EDT 0 recs

I appreciate all the work that has gone into the above replies in this diary.

However one doesn’t need to be a sabrematician to know that Dusty is mediocre. From what I read, though, it appears that just on line up choices we’d be 3 or 4 games better in the win column. Now if one were to be able to statistically review his use of the pitching staff…. say overuse of some pitchers, waiting way too long to bring in a reliever, Dick Pole as the pitching coach etc. – could this team have picked up another 4 games? It is possible that as many as 6 to 8 games that could have been won, can laid at Dusty’s feet.But please don’t forget that we’re doing better than last year and that the media thinks that DUSTY BAKER – (is) The real Reason Behind the RED”S Recent Successes. Probably Castellini too.

My Indian name is "Runs For Beer'

by Madville on Jul 23, 2008 11:03 AM EDT 0 recs

my theory about managers

is that everyone does some things incredibly stupid. Sure, we’ve seen the Dusty stupidity, but he hasn’t done, say, Dave Miley stupidity (taking recliners from his players without telling them, selling Graves’s jersey without letting Danny know, etc.). So maybe Dusty’s ability to manage a team has netted the Reds a few games (more togetherness = more walkoffs? No stats obviously, I’m merely wondering aloud)? But his stupidity has lost us a few. Overall it evens out for the vast majority of managers. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but at least it helps me sleep better.

...because there's already someone posing as Jacob Brumfield

by Cy Schourek on Jul 23, 2008 11:19 AM EDT up 0 recs

But why can't we find a manager who can do both?

It doesn’t seem to be the hardest job on the planet, and it pays in the millions of dollars. Surely we can find someone capable of being a good cheerleader, reading some basic stats, and generally not doing anything too stupid during the game.

I'm not having even a mediocre year.

by Gray on Jul 23, 2008 11:21 AM EDT up 0 recs